ISSUE 32
February 2013
Connections
research for a sustainable future
Development of an ILWS public
From the Associate
lecture series focused on high
profile and current issues relevant to
Director
By A/Prof Vaughan Higgins
It is a great privilege to be taking on
the role of Associate Director of the
ILWS for 2013.
As a rural sociologist I bring a social
science perspective as well as
experience working with researchers
from a range of disciplines. The
ILWS is an important hub within
CSU for multi-disciplinary research
focusing on issues of critical
significance to the future
sustainability of rural and regional
areas.
My main aims as Associate Director
are to work with the executive as
well as members to: (a) further
capitalise on current Institute
research strengths in a way that
improves collaboration between
natural and social scientists; (b)
identify ways of improving ILWS
engagement with the regional
communities where CSU campuses
are based, and (c) explore
opportunities for enhancing the
research skills and capacities of
early career ILWS members.
I hope to achieve these aims through
the following activities:
the Institute’s mission. Delivered
predominantly by ILWS researchers,
the lectures will enhance
engagement of the SRAs, and the
ILWS more broadly, with its regional
communities as well as potentially
lead to funding opportunities as a
consequence of attendance by
government agencies and/or NGOs.
Organisation of a food security
symposium with the longer term
objective of establishing a food
security research hub at CSU. Food
security is becoming one of the
‘master frames’ of contemporary
public policy and is an area in which
the ILWS is ideally positioned to take
a leading role. Cutting across
diverse areas such as food
production, health and nutrition, land
use planning, trade, social welfare
and environmental management, the
issue of food security provides a
nexus for research which is relevant
to many of the SRAs as well as other
CSU research centres. The food
security symposium will contribute to
the ILWS mission of integrated
research by showcasing different
disciplinary perspectives on food
security and providing a forum to
identify opportunities for multidisciplinary research between
members and collaboration outside
the ILWS (including those in other
CSU research centres).
Development of an ILWS
mentoring scheme. The mentoring
scheme will assist in building the
capacity of earlier career
researchers to apply for external
grants and to publish work in high
profile journals. In doing so it will
contribute to the ILWS mission of
undertaking internationally
recognised research.
I welcome your input in developing
these activities and look forward to
working with you in the year ahead.
CONTENTS
From Associate Director
A/Prof Vaughan Higgins
1
Opinion
Prof Gary Luck
2
New Advisory Board
3
Focus on Research
Prof Gary Luck
4
Conferences/Workshops
6
SRA Updates
4
Social research for regional
NRM
Sustainable Water
7
10
Environmental Governance &
Justice for Social Change
11
Adjunct News
13
Visitors
14
Institute Events
14
Appointments
14
Profile
Dr Shelby Laird
15
Post-graduates
Graduations
16
PhD News
16
New Students
16
Overseas Trips
18
In the News
18
Publications
19
New Grants
20
Opinion
Faculty 1000, peer review & Open
Access
Newly-promoted Prof Gary Luck has
been a member of Faculty 1000, an
invitation-only faculty of highprofile international scientists, since
2004. The Faculty originally started
with biomedical researchers but
now includes scientists from all
disciplines.
“The scientific literature grows bigger
every year and the question is how
do you find the good papers out of
the thousands of papers that are
published each year?,” says Gary as
to why Faculty 1000 was formed.
“The purpose of Faculty 1000 is for
members to identify good (novel,
innovative) papers in the literature
and then to write a short evaluation
about those papers. Those
evaluations are published on-line at
Faculty’s website.”
Anyone who is a member can view
those evaluations and the general
public can subscribe to read
evaluations. So far, Gary has
evaluated about 40 papers. In 2011,
ILWS post-doc Dr Simon Watson
became an associate member of
Faculty 1000 and over the past two
years Gary and Simon have taken
turns to evaluate papers.
journals, acceptance rates at
journals are declining, papers are
spending an increasingly amount of
time in review as Editors send them
back to referees two, three and
sometimes four times – the system
is under enormous stress. For
example, it is not uncommon for a
paper to be in review for over a year
as it gets returned to referees
multiple times. This frustrates
authors as it takes ages for their
work to be published.”
One of the perceived strengths of
the most common peer-review
system – anonymity of referees –
can also be one of its weaknesses
as referees are not accountable for
the quality of their review or the
comments they make on submitted
papers.
Quality of refereeing has
declined
“I have found that the quality of
refereeing has declined substantially
in the last 5 or so years,” says Gary.
“This is likely due to increasing
demands on referee’s time to review
more papers, and the desire to
spend their time writing their own
papers and trying to get published in
the top journals.”
In an effort to address the two issues
of delayed publication time and lack
of accountability of referees, the new
journal Faculty 1000 Research has
taken a very innovative approach to
publishing.
initially checked by the journal’s
editors to ensure its suitability and
then it is put up on a web page often
only two days later,” says Gary. “It is
not considered accepted at that
stage but anyone can view the paper
and comment on it. At the same
time, the paper is sent out to
referees and when they have
reviewed the paper their comments
are put up on the web page
alongside the paper.
“The critical difference is that the
referees’ names are published for
everyone to see. When the papers’
authors respond to the reviewers’
comments, their comments and the
edited version of the paper are then
also put up on the web page and
anyone else who wants to comment
can do so as well. Once authors
have achieved two positive reviews
of the paper it is considered
accepted for publication and is then
listed on databases like Scopus.
“The value of this approach is that
the whole process is transparent and
readers can see the various drafts of
the paper, look at the changes the
authors made, balance the author’s
responses with the referee
comments – and finally make their
own decision about the value of the
work. Papers that don’t pass muster
(don’t manage to attract two positive
reviews) are eventually taken off the
website.”
Web site: http://f1000research.com/
More on Gary’s various research
projects and interests on page 4
“When you submit a paper it is
A further initiative from Faculty 1000
is a new Open Access journal,
Faculty 1000 Research, which
began publishing articles last year
on-line and will be officially launched
this year. Gary is on the journal’s
editorial board.
“Last year the group started thinking
about the limitations of the current
peer-review process,” says Gary.
“More and more people, including
myself, are getting frustrated by the
way peer-review and publication is
being handled. So many scientists
are trying to get published in the top
ILWS Newsletter
Issue 32 – 2013
2
Advisory Board
The Institute has a new Advisory
Board which will meet for the first
time in Albury-Wodonga on March
14. The Board will be chaired by
Prof John Williams. Executive officer
to the group is ILWS Business
Manager Ms Nikki Scott.
Members are:
Prof John
Williams AO,
ILWS Adjunct
Professor;
director John
Williams
Scientific
Services Ltd.
John’s life work has been in the
study of hydrology and the use of
water in the landscape and farming,
including land salinity. He is a
member of the Wentworth group of
Concerned Scientists which is
creating a rational debate on
Australia’s water resources.
He was Chief of the Division of Land
and Water, CSIRO when he retired
in 2004 having served earlier at the
CSIRO laboratories at Townsville in
Queensland where, among other
things, he studied the Great Artesian
Basin and the transport of water
from the Great Dividing Range into
the outback of Queensland and New
South Wales. He has also served as
Chief Scientist and Chair of the New
South Wales Department of Natural
Resources’ Science and Information
Board; and was a Commissioner
with the NSW Natural Resources
Commission.
Ms Cathy Mc
Gowan AO,
ILWS Adjunct
Research
Associate;
rural
communities
and
agribusiness
consultant
Cathy has been a member of the
ILWS Advisory Board since its
inception. She is the principal of
Catherine McGowan Consulting
which specialises in building
capacity in individuals and
communities in rural Australia and
overseas. Cathy has a Masters
degree in Applied Science in
ILWS Newsletter
Agriculture and Rural Development.
She has been working in the area of
women in agriculture for over 20
years and regularly provides policy
advice. In 2000 her work with the
dairy industry was acknowledged
with the Australasia Pacific
Extension Network award for
“Excellent in Extension”. She is the
past President of the national
organisation, Australian Women in
Agriculture. As well as her work in
Australia, she is currently working
with farming women in PNG and
India.
Ms Lorne Butt,
Director,
Company
Secretary,
Institute for
Sustainable
Leadership Ltd;
Ecological
Sustainability
Coordinator, Western Institute, TAFE
NSW.
Lorne Butt is completing her Doctor
of Philosophy in Management at
Macquarie University’s Graduate
School of Management (MGSM),
and is researching the key factors
impacting upon sustainability
programs in universities in the
Sydney basin and regions. Lorne
holds a Bachelor of Science in
Environmental Biology and Bachelor
of Science (Honours) in Biological
and Biomedical Sciences from the
University of Technology, Sydney,
specialising in urban landscape
ecology. She has worked in the
public, private and higher education
sectors for over 12 years across the
areas of corporate governance,
strategic planning, project
management, quality management
and audit, risk management,
sustainability, international
education, and occupational health
and safety.
Paul Ryan,
Natural
Resource
Management
advisor
Paul is the
principal of
Interface
NRM, an
environmental consultancy that
specialises in resilience thinking,
strategic planning, adaptive
governance and management. For
the past five years Paul has been
working with federal, state, regional
agencies and local communities to
incorporate resilience concepts into
natural resource management and
planning. An ecologist by training,
Paul has previously worked with
CSIRO and the Resilience Alliance,
coordinating ecological and multidisciplinary research. Prior to this he
worked on-ground for state agencies
and the Goulburn Broken Catchment
Authority in Victoria where he was
involved in the development and
implementation of regional
catchment strategies, programs and
incentive schemes
Prof Kathleen
Bowmer, ILWS
Adjunct
Research Fellow,
water policy
advisor
Kath has
qualifications in agricultural science
and chemistry and is a fellow of the
Australian Institute of Company
Directors. She has been employed
by CSIRO (Deputy Chief CSIRO
Water Resources, and Business
Director CSIRO Land and Water);
Charles Sturt University (Deputy
Vice- Chancellor; more recently coordinating the subject water policy
and management); Griffith University
(Adjunct Professor and team
member of the national water
planning project); State Water
Corporation (non-executive board
member); and the Australian
Research Council (chair of the earth
sciences panel). She also chaired
the Murrumbidgee River
Management Committee. Honours
include the Australian Museum Pol
Eureka Prize for Environmental
Science.
Dr David
Godden,
Adjunct
Professor,
Faculty of
Business, CSU
& Honorary
Associate,
Faculty of Agriculture, University of
Sydney.
Until his retirement in mid-2011, he
was Manager of the Economics
Services Section, NSW Office of
Environment and Heritage in the
Department of Premier and Cabinet.
He managed the Department’s
Issue 32 – 2013
3
economic evaluation of
environmental protection and onand off-park conservation, and
economic evaluation of intra- and
inter-agency policy development.
Barbara Hull,
Chief
Executive
Officer,
Regional
Development
AustraliaMurray
As Chief Executive Officer of
Regional Development Australia
Murray, Barbara is actively focused
on strategic planning, project
delivery, community engagement
and economic development
initiatives. She has extensive
operational experience
demonstrated by virtue of the range
of agribusiness, environmental and
infrastructure projects successfully
delivered throughout the Murray
Region.
Focus on Research
Professor Gary Luck has spent the
past three years as a full-time
researcher, thanks to an ARC Future
Fellowship for the project Integrating Conservation and
Ecosystem Service Values in
Australia.
Since starting the fellowship, which
ends in March 2014, Gary has
published over 20 papers with many
others currently being reviewed or
written up. It has also allowed him to
develop stronger collaborations with
international colleagues through
regular visits to North America and
Europe.
Gary has also been finishing work
that was funded by an Australian
Research Council (ARC) Discovery
Grant, Delivering ecosystem
services to agriculture with Dr
Peter Spooner; and an ARC Linkage
project Managing agricultural
landscapes to maximise
production and conservation
outcomes: the case of the Regent
Parrot, led by Dr Spooner and
A/Prof Dave Watson.
Gary is well-recognised for his
research on ecosystem services, a
relatively new concept that has taken
off since publication in 1997 of a
paper led by Robert Costanza that
estimated the financial value of the
ILWS Newsletter
world’s ecosystems, and also a book
edited by Gretchen Daily and
published in the same year on
Nature’s Services: Societal
Dependence on Natural
Ecosystems.
“Research on ecosystem services
has grown exponentially in the last
10 years,” says Gary. “For example,
I found over 1000 academic papers
just for 2012 that were published
with the keyword ‘ecosystem
services’. Growth in research on
ecosystem services was also
influenced heavily by publication of
the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment in 2005, and most
recently the launch of the program
on The Economics of Ecosystems
and Biodiversity www.teebweb.org.
There is also an Ecosystem Services
Partnership (ESP), a world-wide
network to enhance the science and
practical application of ecosystem
services, which has held five annual
th
conferences so far (the 6 will be
held this year in Bali). Gary attended
last year’s conference in Portland,
Oregon in the U.S. and was involved
in a workshop on mapping and
modelling ecosystem service
priorities, and is a member of the
ESP working group for this topic.
RESEARCH THEMES
Identifying spatial priorities for
protecting ecosystem services
With colleagues from the University
of British Columbia (A/Prof Kai
Chan), University of Queensland (Dr
Carissa Klein) and now through his
involvement in the ESP working
group, Gary is developing
approaches that better identify
spatial priorities for protecting
ecosystem services. This work
attempts to identify locations that are
important for protecting the delivery
of key services such as flood
mitigation, water filtration and carbon
storage.
Nepal that Gary is co-supervising
with Dr Rik Thwaites. Eak is looking
at how best to manage the delivery
of ecosystem services in community
forests in Nepal. “Eak will be
identifying those community forests
that are important for providing
services like carbon storage, timber
harvest and fire wood,” says Gary.
Paper: Luck, G.W., Chan, K.M. & Klein,
C.J. (2012) Identifying spatial priorities
for protecting ecosystem services [v1; ref
status: indexed,
http://f1000r.es/T0yHOY]
F1000Research 1:17 (doi:
10.3410/f1000research.1-17.v1
Tonle Sap in Cambodia. A global priority
watershed for protecting ecosystem
services and biodiversity.
The ethics of ecosystem services
What are the ethical implications of
valuing nature using ecosystem
services? Gary has always been
interested in this question, and when
he was invited to an interdisciplinary
workshop on the ethics of ecosystem
services held in Germany in 2011,
he jumped at the chance to explore
the issue further. As part of the
workshop, Gary led an
interdisciplinary paper on ethical
considerations in on-ground
applications of the ecosystemservices concept. (More next page)
Participants in the interdisciplinary
workshop at the International Academy
for Nature Conservation, Germany.
“We developed a comprehensive
method for how you actually go
about identifying spatial priorities
for ecosystem services which
built on some work that Kai and I
had done previously,” says Gary.
His most recent paper was
published in the new Open
Access journal F1000 Research.
Some of the future work in this
area will be carried out by Eak
Rana, a new PhD student from
Issue 32 – 2013
4
“It was a very challenging, but
extremely rewarding process” says
Gary. “Ecologists, ethicists,
philosophers, economists, policy
makers and practitioners all came
together to explore more deeply the
various ethical issues raised through
valuing nature using ecosystem
services. Previous criticisms of the
approach had focussed primarily on
valuing nature in monetary terms,
but this is only a small component of
the ecosystem-services concept and
it is applied in many different ways
and each has its own ethical
implications.”
The paper argues that the concept
has been used as, for example, a
communication tool, an educational
device to raise people’s awareness
of the value of nature, and in
strategic arguments to guide policy
development. Even highly criticised
approaches such as payments for
ecosystem services schemes do not
require nature to be valued in
monetary terms.
land-use changes and impacts on
bird community dynamics. “How do
we link those land-use changes with
service provision?” says Gary. “The
way we do that is to look at the
ecological characteristics of birds
(i.e. their functional traits such as
body size or foraging behaviour) and
then determine how the assemblage
of these characteristics changes as
land-use change impacts on bird
communities.
“Changes in trait assemblages will
impact on ecosystem function and
service provision. We tested our
framework using birds in apple
orchards as a case study and found
that as tree cover around orchards
increased so did the foraging rate of
birds likely to control adult stages of
apple pests such as codling moth.”
Manu has also found that the
suitability of particular trapping
approaches for flying insects varies
depending on the habitat context.
Paper: Luck, G.W., Chan, K.M.A., Eser,
Case studies of ecosystemservice provision
In collaboration with Peter Spooner
and PhD students Shannon Triplett
and Manu Saunders, Gary is
examining case studies of service
provision in agricultural landscapes –
particularly the horticultural districts
of northern Victoria.
As part of this work, and in
collaboration with Dr Sandra Lavorel
from Université Joseph Fourier in
France and Dr Sue McIntyre from
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Gary
developed the first framework for
vertebrates that used the functional
traits of birds to predict the impact of
environmental change on the
delivery of ecosystem services.
Birds provide a range of ecosystem
services - they pollinate flowers,
control invertebrate pests, dispose of
waste and disperse seeds. However,
these services are under threat as
ILWS Newsletter
Biodynamic almond orchard in northwest Victoria.
“That’s why the almond growers
need to bring in European
honeybees by the truckload to
pollinate their crop,” says Gary.
“The concept is also a great vehicle
for interdisciplinary communication
among ecologists, economists and
social scientists’, says Gary.
U., Gómez-Baggethum, E., Matzdorf, B.,
Norton, B. & Potschin, M.B. (2012).
Ethical considerations in on-ground
applications of the ecosystem services
concept. BioScience 62, 1020-29.
biodynamic almond orchards (that
maintain groundcover) are better at
supporting the native insect species
that are likely to pollinate almonds,
whereas more conventional almond
orchards systems basically don’t
support any native species that
pollinate.
A Regent Parrot eating almonds in northwest Victoria. Regent parrots and other
birds cause damage to almond crops
pre-harvest, but provide growers with a
service post-harvest by removing
residual nuts susceptible to fungal
infection. Photo taken by Hugh
McGregor.
Shannon’s work is taking the novel
approach of examining both the
costs of bird activity in almond
orchards and the benefits birds can
provide growers. For example, preharvest, birds inflict costs on growers
by foraging in almond crops and
damaging nuts. However, postharvest, these same birds may
benefit growers by removing unharvested nuts that are susceptible
to fungal infection that may spread
through the crop.
Shannon has conducted extensive
surveys of bird use of almonds and
conducted manipulative experiments
(netting trees) to try to quantify the
costs and benefits of bird behaviour.
Manu is examining the capacity of
native insects to provide pollination
services to growers. Some early
results from her work suggest that
Papers: Luck, G.W., Lavorel, S.,
McIntyre, S. & Lumb, K. (2012).
Improving the application of vertebrate
trait-based frameworks to the study of
ecosystem services. J. Animal Ecol. 81,
1065-76.
Triplett, S., Luck, G.W. & Spooner, P.
(2012). The importance of managing the
costs and benefits of bird activity for
agricultural sustainability. Int. J. Agric.
Sustainability 10, 268-88
Saunders, M.E. & Luck, G.W. (In press)
Pan-trap catches of pollinator insects
vary with habitat context. Australian
Journal of Entomology. DOI:
10.1111/aen.12008
Urban Ecology
As well as a research interest in
ecosystem services, Gary has done
a lot of work on urban ecology. He
was one of five speakers who gave
public presentations at the
“Biodiversity in the City” evening
held in the Melbourne Town Hall on
Dec 4 last year with members of the
Australian Research Centre for
Urban Ecology (ARCUE).
The evening was part of the
Ecological Society of Australia
conference and was attended by 300
people.
Issue 32 – 2013
5
summary:
http://freshwatergovernance.wordpre
ss.com/)
A typical mid-density suburb in regional
Australia
Gary is currently working with some
members of ARCUE on a review
paper about restoring and managing
urban ecosystems in Australia, and
is exploring options to develop a
special issue of the journal
Ecological Management and
Restoration to focus on urban
ecosystems.
He is also working with Caragh
Threlfall, a post-doc from Melbourne
University, on the ecological values
of community gardens across
Melbourne and whether or not birds
and bats are providing any
ecosystem services to growers.
“Community gardens are really
taking off in Melbourne – some even
have a waiting list to get in,” says
Gary.
Finally, he is also co-supervising
Ashlea Hunter’s PhD with Dr
Jonathon Howard. Ashlea will be
looking at the social and ecological
values of urban green spaces in
Sydney, focusing on the link
between ecological characteristics of
greenspace and how these might
influence human well-being. Her
work will link to previous research
Gary, Dr Dianne Boxall and Dr
Penny Davidson have done on
urban biodiversity and human wellbeing.
Conferences/
Workshops
Early Career Researchers in Water
Governance workshop
Dr Anna Lukasiewicz, Dr James
Patterson (University of Queensland)
and Dr Phil Wallis (Monash
University) also hosted a workshop
for ECRs: Early Career Researchers
in Water Governance at the Tapping
the Turn conference in Canberra on
Nov 16. The purpose of the
workshop was to grow the Fresh
Water Network, provide a space for
newer researchers to reflect on their
experiences in water governance
research. Read the workshop
ILWS Newsletter
Australian Society for Limnology
Institute Director Prof Max Finlayson
attended the Australian Society for
Limnology Congress, held Nov 26 to
29, in Armidale, NSW, where as
editor-in-chief of the CSIRO journal
Marine and Freshwater Research he
presented a student prize. Also in
attendance were Dr Paul Humphries
who spoke on ‘The River Wave
Concept: unifying river ecosystem
models?’; Dr Nicole McCasker on
‘It’s time we talked about Sponges:
what can they tell us about palaeoenvironments?’; A/Prof Robyn Watts
on ‘Testing predictions from flowecology relationships: biofilm
responses to environmental flows in
the Edward-Wakool system in the
Murray-Darling Basin’; Dr Keller Kopf
on ‘Opportunistic spawning of fish in
response to river flow regulation’;
and Dr Sylvia Zukowski on ‘Effects
of a prolonged hypoxic blackwater
event on Murray crayfish (Euastacus
armatus) populations in the River
Murray, Australia. Institute adjunct
Dr Sally Hladyz presented on
‘Influence of flow regime on
community structure and ecosystem
process in managed rivers.’
ESA Conference
The Institute was well-represented
by past and present members at the
2012 Ecological Society of
Australia’s annual conference held
Dec 3-7 in Melbourne starting with
A/Prof Ian Lunt who gave the
opening plenary address speaking
on “Long-term dynamics in
temperate woodlands”.
Other Institute presenters were:A/Prof David Watson - The effects
of mistletoe on insectivore
occurrence: insights from a removal
experiment
Dr Maggie Watson - Drivers of
population-level effects of parasites
and parasite virulence: life-history
meets meta-analysis
Karolina Petrovic (PhD candidate) A world on a plate: heterogeneity in
brushtail possum nutrition
A/Prof Gary Luck - Functional
diversity across multiple land uses:
interpretations of redundancy
depend on functional group identity
There were also presentations by
School of Environmental Sciences’
honours students Claire Coulson
and Gaye Bourke; and former ILWS
PhD students Dr Janet Cohn and Dr
Alison Skinner.
NCCARF Adaptation Workshop
ILWS post-doc Dr Anna
Lukasiewicz was an invited cofacilitator for a session on
governance at the “Valuing
Adaptation” NCCARF Workshop
held at Monash University,
Melbourne Dec 11-12. Anna gave a
presentation on “Catchment-level
climate change adaptation: The
complexity of an Ecosystem-Based
Approach” based on her post-doc
project.
Global symposium and workshop
for young scientists
Two of the Institute’s young
scientists, post-doc Dr Anna
Lukasiewicz, and PhD student Lei
Yinru (Ruby), attended a symposium
and workshop for young scientists
entitled “Global Environmental
Change and Human Health: Extreme
Events and Urbanization in the Asia
Pacific Region” run by the
International Institute for Global
Health (part of the United Nations
University in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia), Jan 14-18.
The symposium examined the interrelated topics of climate change,
extreme risks and urbanisation with
a focus on how these impact human
health. It revolved around three
themes - Forecasting and
Preparedness, Emergency
Response; and Mitigation and
Adaptation which were addressed by
a variety of speakers.
“The vast majority of speakers came
from public health; however the
issue of ecosystem health was
mentioned by most,” says Anna.
(Anna was originally selected as the
Australian young scientist
representative but replaced Prof Max
Finlayson who was to address the
Mitigation and Adaptation theme
when he was unable to attend.) Her
talk, “Climate change adaptation: An
ecosystem-based approach”,
focused on ecosystem health, was
based on her post-doc on low-risk
adaptation. The symposium was
followed by a field visit to Kuala
Lumpur City Hall. (More next page)
Issue 32 – 2013
6
There the participants were shown
the KL traffic operation centre (the
computerised system came from
Australia, first installed in 1979) and
a visit to the National Hydraulic
Research Institute of Malaysia which
conducts physical modelling of
dams, rivers, and coastal and
offshore water movements.
The workshop for young scientists
ran from January 17 -18 and
included key note addresses by
symposium speakers. (Anna again
replaced Max to deliver a
presentation on the impact of
environmental change on natural
resources). Representatives of all
the Asia Pacific countries present
(Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lao
PDR, Cambodia, Thailand,
Philippines and Vietnam) gave
presentations on the impacts of
climate change in their country.
Anna’s role as the Australian young
scientist representative was taken up
by Ruby who gave a presentation on
how extreme events may impact on
migration in Australia. The young
scientists then worked on research
proposals around the themes of
preparedness, human health and
urbanisation.
“It was a great challenge for the
young scientists from different
countries and different research field
to work on one research proposal,”
says Ruby. “However, it also was a
great opportunity to enhance the
integration of our research fields in
cooperation.” Ruby and another
other six young scholars from China,
Malaysia, Lao and Thailand gave a
joint presentation on “Impacts of
Rapid Urbanization Process on
Water Pollution”, from a social
behaviour and natural science
aspect.
“It was good to see so many people
stressing the need for healthy
ecosystems but since most of the
young scientists came from a
medical, health or a meteorological
background, they did not take up
ecosystems as a research focus in
their proposals,” says Anna. “Despite
this, the symposium and workshop
successfully analysed the link
between climate change, the state of
the environment (especially in urban
settings) and human health and
hopefully gave young Asian
scientists a broader perspective on
human health.”
ILWS Newsletter
Symposium participants – pic by Prof
Jamal Hisham Hashim from the United
Nations University-International Institute
for Global Health.
Winton Wetlands
Institute Director Prof Max Finlayson
attended a meeting of the Scientific
and Technical Advisory Group for
the Winton Wetlands Restoration
Project in Benalla on Dec 14.
SRA Updates
SOCIAL RESEARCH FOR
REGIONAL NATURAL RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
SRA leader Prof Allan Curtis
National Centre for Groundwater
Research & Training
The Institute’s involvement in
research within the National Centre
for Groundwater Research &
Training (NCGRT) is continuing. Its
members are also contributing to
short courses run by the NCGRT,
including its “Ground water for
decision makers” workshops.
Over the last three years the Institute
has attracted an additional $500K
(from the NSW Government, Cotton
CRC, NCGRT & CSU) in research
funding to add to the initial $650K
(2009-2014) from the NCGRT
(ARC/NWC). The CSU social
researchers are contributing to
Program 5: integration of socioeconomics, policy and decision
support systems which is led by Prof
Tony Jakeman at ANU and includes
researchers at UWA and CSIRO.
SRA leader Prof Allan Curtis sees
the additional funding as recognition
of the contribution that social science
has made to the Centre and the
effectiveness of the CSU team in
some of the Centre’s large
integration projects.“NCGRT
involvement has enabled us to be
part of new initiatives where NCGRT
funds have provided the leverage to
attract additional resources,” says
Allan. “The NCGRT partnership with
the Cotton CRC is a good example
of that. Program 5 was contracted by
the CRC to investigate the socioeconomic and environmental
impacts of water reform and climate
change in the Namoi Valley. That
project funded Dr Emily Sharp’s post
doctoral fellowship.
“The NCGRT also recognised the
need for additional social research
and has part-funded an additional
post doc position at CSU for the past
three years (Dr Emily Mendham).
The additional resources have
enabled us to fund three post doc
positions (Dr Michael Mitchell) and
four PhDs.”
Current PhD students supported by
the NCGRT are Andrea Rawluk
(governance arrangements for
Managed Aquifer Recharge);
Saideepa Kumar (environmental
modeling for optimal outcomes of
environmental watering); and
Theresa Groth (occupational identity
in multi-functional landscapes).
A new PhD student, Jennifer Sherry
from the USA, will start next month.
Issue 32 – 2013
7
Groundwater dependent
ecosystems
Dr Michael Mitchell and Dr Emily
Sharp have now completed their
appointments within the NCGRT. Dr
Emily Mendham is continuing her
work and after completing the
Wimmera social benchmarking
study is now focused on
Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems
(GDE).
explore opportunities for MAR in
farming landscapes.
“An obvious example of a GDE is the
mound springs in South Australia
that are dependent on water flowing
through the Great Artesian Basin,”
says Allan. “But there other GDE,
often on a much smaller scale, such
as the trees in a river bed that
wouldn’t survive in a dry period
without access to groundwater.
An initial workshop- Research to
evaluate the use of groundwater
to support a food bowl in the
lower Ovens Valley with key
stakeholders will be hosted by the
NCGRT and Wangaratta City
Council, March 13 in Wangaratta. Its
aim is to identify a research agenda
for a project evaluating the MAR
opportunity in the Ovens. In
attendance will be representatives
from the Murray Darling Basin
Authority, North East Water,
Goulburn Murray Water, the
Department of Sustainability and
Environments, the Department of
Primary Industry, the North East
Catchment Management Authority
as well as NCGRT researchers from
CSU, ANU, UNSW and CSIRO.
“There are lots of GDE in Australia
but we don’t have a good handle on
them which we really need if we are
going to start to utilise groundwater
more. NCGRT scientists are working
out ways to define and map GDE
and to better understand the extent
of their dependency on groundwater.
“We are contributing to those
activities as part of a number of
teams operating across the NCGRT
and the University of Canberra
Murray-Darling Futures CRN that
include hydrologists, economists,
ecologists and resource managers.”
Emily is working with the North
Central CMA, Goulburn Murray
Water and the Department of
Primary Industries to find out what
farmers and other key stakeholders
understand about the relationship
between groundwater and surface
water in specific parts of the NC
CMA region, including whether they
can identify GDE. She will begin
interviewing landholders late
summer/early autumn this year.
Managed Aquifer Recovery
The potential of Managed Aquifer
Recovery (MAR) in farming
landscapes is the missing link in
water management in Australia
according to Prof Curtis.
With Prof Jakeman (ANU) and
A/Prof Bryce Kelly (UNSW), he coconvened a national workshop on
that topic in April last year which
brought together NCGRT
researchers, industry stakeholders
and key government agencies to
ILWS Newsletter
The workshop identified
opportunities where MAR could have
substantial environmental as well as
production benefits. A process for
evaluating MAR opportunities was
also developed. One of the
opportunities for MAR identified at
the national workshop is in the
Ovens Valley, in North-East Victoria.
“We expect the Ovens to be the
location for an integrated case study
in the next phase of the NCGRT
[funding for which ceases in 2014]
which could be as a CRC, or, more
likely, an ARC Centre of Research
Excellence,” says Allan.
“The Ovens is one of the few valleys
in the Basin where there is a large
volume of unused water below the
cap [the sustainable diversion limit
set by the MDBA], so you could
actually take up those unused
entitlements for agriculture and still
be below the cap. The proposal is to
access that water for a greenfield
food bowl concept in the Lower
Ovens based on the use of
groundwater.
“Of course, accessing that water will
mean there is less water flowing
elsewhere. So, we really need to
understand the nature and extent of
those impacts before development
occurs. I expect there will need to be
investigations of the best ways to
access the water resource; and the
potential impact of development on
aquifer integrity and on downstream
aquatic and riparian ecosystems.
“One of the things we could do is
compare the economics of a centre
pivot system using groundwater,
which it is likely to be adopted in the
Lower Ovens, with more
conventional irrigation using dams
and canals. Apart from any negative
environmental impacts, there is a
large public subsidy of conventional
systems that is largely hidden. That
is, the charges levied on irrigators for
water delivery do not reflect the
costs of providing the infrastructure
and services to do that. It could be
that there is a very strong economic
argument for Government to support
the research and development costs
of developing more efficient irrigation
systems.”
He says the project, if it goes ahead,
would be an interdisciplinary project
over three to five years and is likely
to involve others from ILWS as well
as agricultural scientists from the
E.H. Graham Centre.
Social benchmarking projects
The SRA’s involvement in social
bench marking projects is
continuing.
Dr Emily Sharp and Prof Allan Curtis
are now writing up publications from
their “The social drivers of catchment
management in the Wimmera CMA”
two-year project funded by the CMA
which finished last year. It follows
previous projects in the Wimmera in
2002 and 2007.
The ILWS team has a commitment
from the North Central CMA for a
social bench marking project that will
commence mid-2013.“This is really
exciting because the CMA is
committed to using the survey data
to evaluate the outcomes of NRM
investments in its catchment,” says
Allan. “The CMA has prioritised the
environmental assets in the region
and invested resources to achieve
specific objectives in each asset.
“So what we will do is use a survey
of rural landholders to gather
spatially-referenced data for specific
intermediate objectives for each of
the key environmental assets. Over
time, the CMA will be able to assess
the achievement of intermediate
objectives for each asset.
“For example, whether awareness of
an issue has changed; if knowledge
of resource degradation processes
has improved; and the extent of
implementation of practices
expected to lead to improved
environmental condition.”
Issue 32 – 2013
8
(The survey will include items
exploring landholder knowledge and
management of Groundwater
Dependent Ecosystems to provide
further information for Emily’s
NCGRT/ UC CRN project.)
NSW Department of Agriculture
Members of the SRA are building a
partnership with the NSW
Department of Agriculture where
the CSU social researchers will
contribute to projects related to
climate change, social
benchmarking and engaging
farmers in transformational
change.
“We have been identified by the
Department as a preferred provider
to meet the department’s need for
social research,” says Allan, who,
with other SRA members, attended a
workshop held at the Department’s
Head Office in Orange last
November. That workshop was
coordinated by Katrina Sinclair, a
long-term Department staffer who is
doing a PhD with CSU.
“As a result of the meeting in
Orange there was a webinar where
Emily and Katrina provided an
introduction to qualitative and mixed
method approaches to social
research and discussions are
underway to develop research
projects,” says Allan. “One of those
projects is examining the intersection
between mining, groundwater and
agriculture and could be wrapped
into the next iteration of the NCGRT.
“As a CSU PhD and a DPI
employee, Katrina has played a
critical role in establishing this
relationship with NSW Agriculture.
She will continue working with the
Department when she completes her
PhD and will be able to work with us
on projects identified with the
Department.”
Katrina’s PhD is
examining
deliberate
attempts to
transform
agriculture, using
deregulation of
the Australian
dairy industry as
the case study.
Let’s Talk Fish project
What do people really think about
Australia’s wild-catch commercial
fishing industry?
The Australian Government’s
Fisheries and Research
Development Corporation wanted to
find out and has engaged our social
researchers to do so.
The two-year project, ‘Let’s Talk
Fish: Assisting industry to
understand and inform conversation
about the sustainability of wild catch
fishing’ is led by Dr Nicki Mazur and
began last year.
“The project is looking at why people
have certain attitudes towards
Australia’s wild-catch commercial
fishing industry,” says Nicki. “We are
also investigating how those views
can affect decisions about how,
when and where commercial fishing
activities are carried out.”
The research team (which includes
Prof Curtis) has worked closely with
industry to develop and pre-test a
survey which will be sent by mail to
people living in Melbourne, Sydney
and Brisbane over the next two
months.
“We are also taking three or four
decisions where commercial fishers
have lost access to a resource and
will look at how those decisions were
made and what influence the
different players have had, including
the influence of public opinion,” says
Allan. “The assumption is that it has
often been public opinion that makes
the difference, but we’re not so
sure... so we are testing that
assumption. A key aspect of what
we are doing is assessing the social
acceptability of the wild catch sector,
so part of what we are doing is
working out how to measure social
acceptability.”
Community Values project
Working on this year-long project,
which commenced last July, is
research fellow Dr Christopher
Raymond along with Prof Curtis.
The project titled “Integrating
community values into regional
sustainability planning: The Lower
Hunter region, NSW” has been
funded by SEWPAC through the
UTas Landscape and Policy hub of
the National Environmental
Research Program.
It is mapping community values and
development preferences for
regional sustainability planning in the
Lower Hunter region of NSW with
three main objectives:
•
•
•
To develop a robust and
standardised method for
mapping community values
for regional sustainability
across Australia with the
Lower Hunter as a pilot study
To undertake a reliability
check of sites planned for
National Park or urban growth
expansion using community
values
To recommend a suite of
policies which can help inform
community engagement into
regional sustainability
planning in regional Australia
“We’re trying to develop a
methodology that can be applied
across Australia for gathering
information about how the
community values environmental
assets so that information can be
included in regional planning,” says
Allan. “The survey has been
developed and sent out and we’ve
got the surveys back. Chris is about
to commence data analysis and we
will have a draft report with
preliminary findings completed in the
next couple of months.
“One of the interesting
opportunities that has arisen
because of our involvement in
the Landscapes and Policy hub
is that Chris will be able to
compare the survey data about
community values for the
environment with the priorities
developed by scientists through
the process that identifies
Matters of National
Environmental Significance.”
Tuna fishing boats at Port Lincoln
ILWS Newsletter
Issue 32 – 2013
9
SUSTAINABLE WATER
Projects’ Celebration
Nearly fifty people, including
representatives from the
Commonwealth Environmental
Water Office (CEWO) and various
partner agencies, attended a special
morning tea and presentation held
on November 20 last year to
celebrate the continued success of
two exciting projects in the MurrayDarling Basin for the Institute’s
Sustainable Water Strategic
Research Area.
Both projects are funded by the
CEWO and will monitor and assess
the ecosystem responses to
environmental watering in the
Edward-Wakool and Murrumbidgee
river systems during the 2012-2013
water year.
Partners in the Edward-Wakool
project, led by A/Prof Robyn Watts,
include the Murray Catchment
Management Authority, Monash
University, the NSW Office of
Environment and Heritage, the NSW
Department of Primary Industries
and the Wakool River Association.
Partners in the Murrumbidgee
project, led by Dr Skye Wassens,
include the University of NSW, the
NSW Department of Primary
Industries, the NSW Office of
Environment and Heritage and the
Murrumbidgee Catchment
Management Authority.
Both A/Prof Watts and Dr Wassens
gave presentations on previous work
done in the two river systems and on
the current monitoring projects.
In attendance at the celebration was
Dr Simon Banks from the CEWO
whose branch is responsible for
managing Commonwealth
environmental
water delivery.
(L to R) James
Smeeth (CEWO),
Dr Skye Wassens,
A/Prof Robyn
Watts, Dr Simon
Banks (CEWO) and
Sam Roseby
(CEWO)
“A big part of our
job is working
with partners to
work out options
for the use of
Commonwealth
ILWS Newsletter
environmental water, deciding to
make the water available for the
preferred options and then working
with our delivery partners to actively
manage the use of that water,” said
Dr Banks who also has the
responsibility for CEWO’s monitoring
and evaluation program.
“At the moment we are undertaking
short-term projects monitoring the
outcomes of using Commonwealth
environmental water while we are
developing our longer-term
monitoring approach. All the results
from current monitoring feed into our
decision-making either during an
event or into our annual decisionmaking around what we are seeking
to achieve with the water.”
As well as the projects in the
Edward-Wakool and the
Murrumbidgee, CEWO is also
funding similar monitoring projects in
the Goulburn-Broken river system
and Lower Murray.
“The results from all these projects
will support and contribute to the
development of the longer-term
approach which we plan to have in
place by the end of 2013,” said Dr
Banks.
He said the Edward-Wakool and the
Murrumbidgee river systems were
among the seven areas CEWO is
targeting for longer-term monitoring.
“We can’t monitor everywhere which
is why we have released a
monitoring, evaluation, reporting and
improvement framework that sets
out our long term vision,” he said.
“The process we are going through
at the moment to determine a more
detailed design for long-term
monitoring means that we can
maximise efficient use of our
resources to get the best we can
from monitoring.”
Dr Banks described how the
monitoring projects have evolved to
become large projects that include
numerous partner agencies, and in
the case of the Edward-Wakool – the
ongoing support of the Wakool River
Association, a local community
group, which was described as “very
exciting.”
“Each organisation brings different
skills and experience to the
monitoring and evaluation of the
water,” said Dr Banks. “It works very
well in informing us how to achieve
the best environmental outcomes
from the use of the water.”
The Institute has engaged a team of
researchers and technical staff to
work on the two monitoring
projects. They include:
Research associate Dr Susanne
Watkins who began work on the
Edward-Wakool project last
November.
Much of
Susanne’s
work is in
the
laboratory
processing
and
identifying
the
zooplankton samples collected in the
field to be followed by data analysis
and some report writing.
“A big part of what I am doing is
dividing the samples into size
classes so we can work out what
aged fish and what type of fish
larvae are feeding on them,” says
Susanne. “As the project is about
fish movement and recruitment to do
with environmental flows, we are
interested in how much food is
available because fish larvae are
limited to what they can eat by their
gape size.”
Susanne, a wetland ecologist,
did her PhD (initially with
Monash University and then the
Murray Darling Freshwater
Research Centre as its director
Dr Ben Gawne was one of her
supervisors) on the impacts on
the ecology of floodplain
wetlands along the Murray
River between Lake Hume and
Corowa from seasonal reversal
of flows and riparian clearing.
She then worked at MDRFC as
a post-doc. (More next page)
Issue 32 – 2013
10
New technical assistant for the
Edward-Wakool is James Abell
whose work background is very
varied. He has worked as a
machinery operator in a feedlot,
weed officer with Wagga council,
Health and Safety Officer at
Wodonga TAFE, walking track
labourer in Victorian Alps...and 10
years as a ranger with the Livestock
Health and Pest Authority/Rural
Lands Protection Board where his
roles included pest animal and insect
management, natural resource
management, emergency
management, including flood relief
and post fire management, and
endangered species management.
James Abell with a light trap used to
attract larval fish at night
His work with ILWS is mostly out in
the field with technical officer Tim
Kaminskas collecting water quality,
larval fish and zooplankton samples.
Tim is also doing laboratory work
identifying larval fish.
larval Murray cod. Last year he
worked with A/Prof Hubert Keckeis
from the University of Vienna,
Austria, on an experimental study of
the effect of a flow refuge on the
movement patterns of cyprinid larvae
in an artificial stream channel.
Carmen
Amos
(left) (also
an ILWS
PhD
student) is
working on
the
Murrumbid
gee River project as a research
assistant. Carmen, a CSU undergraduate with a Bachelor of Animal
Science, knows many of the sites
well, as they were sites she used for
her Honors project looking at the
recovery of frog communities in the
River Red Gum Forest in the midMurrumbidgee wetlands in 2011.
Half-way through last year she
began her PhD on the responses of
frogs to environmental factors on a
range of scales within the Lachlan
catchment. She spends much of her
time out in the field collecting data
for a broad-scale survey of 50 sites
from the great Cumbung Swamp up
to just past Condobolin.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND
GOVERNANCE FOR SOCIAL
CHANGE
Launch & research symposium
ILWS’s newest Strategic Research
Area on Environmental Justice and
Governance for Social Change was
launched on November 8, 2012 at a
research symposium around the
theme of: Strategies for building
environmentally sustainable and
socially just communities.
The symposium and launch was
held at the CSU Wine Training
Centre in Wagga and attended by
30-40 participants including a
diverse range of CSU researchers
and external visitors.
Tim Kaminskas with a net used to trawl
for zooplankton
Tim is a CSU undergraduate who did
his Honours with Dr Paul Humphries
(2010-2011). His Honours project
was an experimental study of
downstream movement behaviour of
ILWS Newsletter
The SRA was launched by ILWS
Director, Prof Max Finlayson,
followed by a keynote presentation
from one of Australia’s leading
environmental sociologists, Prof
Stewart Lockie from the Australian
National University. The remainder
of the day was devoted to two
research panels that focused on the
political/equity and
cultural/knowledge dimensions of the
symposium theme. Each panel
involved short presentations from
four SRA members, followed by a
discussion with the audience.
“The symposium represented the
first occasion for SRA members and
others to gain a fuller sense of its
collective strengths and interests,”
says Dr Helen Masterman-Smith, coleader of the SRA together with Prof
Vaughan Higgins.
In his address, Max emphasised the
important contribution the SRA will
make to fostering multidisciplinary
research, noting that the research
focus on environmental justice and
governance had already garnered
SRA membership from all CSU
faculties, thereby laying a strong
foundation for cross-disciplinary
collaboration.
Stewart’s
(pictured left)
keynote
address
painted the
broad
landscape
from which
environmental
social
sciences has
emerged in
recent
decades and the vital contributions
that such disciplines bring to
addressing the challenge of building
environmentally sustainable and
socially just communities.
“Australia has been dealing with a
number of social and environmental
challenges for decades,” he said.
“What’s possibly unique today is the
extent to which those challenges are
related to global processes of
environmental change and the
extent to which the stakeholders, in
what we do here in Australia, are
global in nature.”
He said the idea of environmental
justice arose out of the way in which
ethnic and racial minorities in some
parts of the world have been
exposed to environmental harm.
That idea has caught on and the
idea of justice and other ideas like
social responsibility were seen, more
and more, as being the
responsibilities of anyone who was
Issue 32 – 2013
11
producing agricultural commodities
or using natural resources.
The urgency of responding to global
change makes it even more
important that social scientists and
others really engage with the policy
agenda, in and outside government,
in a critical and constructive manner.
“We won’t be doing anyone a favour
by saying ‘this is all controversial, if
we say something critical it might get
picked up by groups who are
opposed to any kind of change
therefore we should keep our
mouths shut,’” said Stewart. “We
really need to be involved and
engaged with the governments, the
government agencies, the
community groups, the NGOs, the
industry groups... I think we have a
critical role in looking at the
unintended consequences of some
policy actions and trying to ‘unpick’
some of the assumptions that are
built into those.”
Dr Jonathon Howard initiated the
discussion with comments on the
increasingly political and politicised
climate in which park ranger
professionals operate.
Dr Michael Mitchell followed by
outlining aspects of the
organisational politics of several
natural resource management
agencies, particularly in terms of
organisational and social learning
models, stemming from his recently
completed doctoral thesis.
Both contributors provided insights
into the institutional challenges and
opportunities that face employees
working in the environmental
professions.
Need to inform
He says a lot of policy is based on
attempts to project how people and
businesses will respond to an
intervention. “We need to be
informing understanding of what that
response is likely to be, otherwise
governments will be implementing
their own naive sociology,” he says.
“A lot of the key issues we were
dealing with 20 years ago are still
here. Twenty years ago, the
economy was quite clearly
globalising but the other dimensions
of sustainability, the environmental
and the social, have also become
much more global in orientation. And
that puts a lot of pressure on
resource users such as small
businesses and farmers.”
In raising and bringing together
many of the contemporary issues
that SRA researchers are currently
grappling with, Stewart’s address
and subsequent contributions
throughout the day, provided an
ideal starting point for the ensuing
panel discussions.
Dr Helen Masterman-Smith, Prof Stewart
Lockie and A/Prof Vaughan Higgins
Dr Merrilyn Crichton then drew on
her past and current research on
rural health access issues and
disability rights to consider aspects
of water justice and equity issues
confronting rural residents with a
disability, including their
marginalisation from public
discussions to date.
A/Prof Ian Gray provided insights
into the potentialities of revitalising
public transport options as an
integral component of good
environmental governance, based
on his work with successful local and
international revitalisation projects.
At lunch Dr John Rafferty outlined
the development of a bid for the
establishment of a UN University
designated Regional Centre for
Expertise (RCE) on Sustainable
Development (Murray-Darling), with
Charles Sturt University as a lead
institution. The successful bid has
now been formally endorsed by the
UN University. The RCE is a diverse
and wide-ranging consortium of
educational and industry/community
stakeholders across the MurrayDarling Basin. It will bring together
these stakeholders to collaborate on
educational, research and
community engagement projects that
aim to build environmentally
sustainable communities in the
MDB. (At this stage where the RCE
will sit within CSU and the
governance arrangements between
CSU and partners in the RCE are
still to be finalised.)
“This exciting development provides
a ready-made network of potential
industry/community partners that
members of the Environmental
Justice and Governance SRA will be
able to utilise,” says Helen.
“Conversely, the SRA will provide
important research capacity for RCE
initiatives.”
The afternoon concluded with a
second panel focused on the cultural
and knowledge dimensions of
building environmentally sustainable
and just communities.
Dr Anna Lukasiewicz spoke to
issues arising from her PhD
dissertation around the
marginalisation of indigenous
environmental knowledge in relation
to water rights and justice.
Dr Angela Ragusa presented
findings from her research on the
incentives and disincentives
experienced by tree-changers and
the implications of this for rural
community revitalisation, including
comments on rural livelihoods.
A/ Prof Jennifer McKinnon
canvassed the emergent interest in
integrating social and environmental
awareness and rights within social
work practice and the possibilities for
such professions to act as
environmental change agents.
(More next page)
The first panel discussion examined
some of the political and social
equity dimensions of building
environmentally sustainable and
socially just communities
commencing with contributions from
four SRA members.
Dr Merrilyn Crichton & A/Prof Ian Gray
ILWS Newsletter
Issue 32 – 2013
12
Similarly, Dr Jillian Dunphy
conveyed the growing recognition
amongst healthcare sector workers
and stakeholders of the need to build
their capacities to build
environmentally sustainable
healthcare systems, based on a
recently completed DEWHA funded
study, also involving other CSU/SRA
researchers (Dr Helen MastermanSmith, Robin Harvey and Marie
Sheahan).
“The symposium was highly
successful in showcasing the
synergies amongst CSU researchers
engaged with aspects of
environmental justice and
governance research,” says Helen.
A practical outcome involves the
production of a special edition of
Rural Society around the theme of
Work and the Environment in Rural
Society to which several symposium
presenters have submitted articles.
A second publication opportunity for
presenters, and interested others,
will entail a proposal for a special
issue of the Australian Journal of
Social Issues on the broad theme of
Environmental Justice and
Governance. If you would like to be
involved please contact
[email protected].
Further development of potential
research projects will be picked up at
the SRA’s next meeting on Tuesday
th
26 February (2-5pm). Other
interested persons should contact
one of the SRA co-convenors
([email protected] or
[email protected])
Adjunct News
New Appointment
Institute adjunct Dr Digby Race has
taken up a five year appointment as
a research scientist with CSIRO to
work as a principal research leader
with the CRC for Remote Economic
Participation.
ILWS Newsletter
This relatively new CRC has been
going for about 18 months with
programs in the Central Australia,
Kimberley and Cape York regions.
“My role is to lead multi-disciplinary
research to better understand how
remote Australian communities can
adapt to climate change, develop
renewable energies and participate
in the carbon economy,” said Digby
before leaving for Alice Springs,
where he is now based with his
family - ILWS PhD student Fleur
Stelling and their two children. Of
the move Digby, a socio-economic
scientist, said: “It’s an exciting midlife adventure and a chance to
explore the very different landscapes
and communities beyond south-east
Australia, which is where my work
has largely been focussed in the
past.”
The new role builds on Digby’s
previous research, much of which
has been around Natural Resource
Management and communities in
temperate farming landscapes.
“It’s asking similar questions about
community adaptation to its
preferred futures which invariably
draws on multi-disciplinary research;
how we integrate biophysical, social,
economic and policy dimensions
which affect people’s lives,” said
Digby. “Similar questions but for a
different landscape, a different
climate and different communities,
which are also similar questions that
frame our research projects in
Indonesia.”
Digby has a number of international
PhD students whom he supervises.
Two of these, Binod Devkota and
Lukas Wibowo, graduated last year.
He is still actively involved in the
supervision of Tri Wahyudiyati and
Yustina Murdiningrum who are close
to submitting their PhD theses, and
has become a co-supervisor for Mei
Mei Meilani, Mohan Poudel and
Popular Gentle.
agreement with the Australian
Government to promote biodiversity
and conserve cultural resources.
Warul Kawa (Deliverance Island)
(pictured above) is a densely
forested sand cay approximately
40ha and Awaiyal Kawa (Kerr Islet)
is almost 10km south of Warul
Kawa, is a smaller (approximately
2ha) and sparsely vegetated. I
visited the islands with a team of
scientists (including botanists,
archaeologists and anthropologists)
and traditional owners in December
2011 and November 2012, for five
and four days respectively.
This study was part of surveys to
document the cultural and natural
values of the island, to inform the
development of a final Plan of
Management for Warul Kawa IPA
and to provide training for Torres
Strait Regional Authority rangers.
The objective of the biophysical (my
role) investigations was to
systematically record the terrestrial
vertebrate fauna (birds, mammals
and reptiles) of the island, describe
their habitats, and identify key
ecological values and threats.
Torres Strait Conservation and
Management
By ILWS Adjunct – Dr Justin Watson
The islands provide a number of
valuable ecological features,
including biodiversity value for
migratory and resident birds and
reptiles, mudflats/sandflats
(important forage and roost habitat
for migratory birds, sandbank/sand
spit as nesting and roosting area for
large colony of Crested Terns and
migratory waders, black flying fox
colony, Pelican rookery and nesting
site (Awaiyal Kawa), nesting site for
Nankeen Night Herons, dugong
habitat and marine turtles nesting.
As part of the planning and
management of the Indigenous
Protected Area (IPA) programme I
had the opportunity to visit two small
uninhabited islands in northwest
Torres Strait. An IPA is an area over
which the traditional Indigenous
owners have entered into a voluntary
One small skink (Carlia sexdentata)
was captured on the island, although
in relatively low numbers compared
to other islands in the Strait. A total
of 70 bird species were recorded
from these islands, including a
number that are listed at
Commonwealth and State level as
Issue 32 – 2013
13
conservation significant. Of
particular interest and potentially
high threat to island biodiversity
(particularly fauna using terrestrial
habitats and resources) is the
introduced Black Rat, which was
seen (and caught during a trial
exercise) in large numbers.
I have been doing research in the
Torres Strait since 2007 and
appreciate the opportunity to explore
the islands, always searching, in the
hope of discovering something
“special”. I feel privileged to have
been invited to places of significant
cultural meaning to the local people
and have made good friendships
along the way. I hope to be able to
continue this work that sees the
collaboration of western science with
a vast traditional environmental
knowledge for the protection and
conservation of both cultural and
biological values of this unique area.
•
Justin also had a Poster
abstract ‘Ecosystem
functioning and rehabilitation
of a mosaic landscape’ at
Society Ecological
Restoration Australia
conference in Perth,
December 2012
Challenges for Agriculture
Prof John Mullen gave an invited
presentation on ‘The future
Productivity and Competitiveness
challenge for Australian Agriculture’
at Drivers of Future Agriculture
Productivity research seminar,
Australian Farm Institute, November
13, 2012, in Brisbane.
Visitors
Dr Phousavanh Phouvin, a
researcher from the National
University of Lao.
While here Dr Phouvin, who has
been based at the Narrandera
Fisheries Centre for the past three
months, gave a presentation on the
ecology of migratory fish in the
Lower Mekong Basin, speaking on
his research into aspects of hydro
plant design that cause fish injuries
and mortality.
Dr Phouvin was in Australia as part
of a Crawford Fund’s Fellowship
Program looking at ongoing targeted
and applied research into aspects of
hydro plant design that cause fish
injuries and mortality. This work is of
extreme relevance to plans for hydro
development in Lao PDR. The
innovative and applied nature of the
approach and anticipated outcomes
mean that results could be directly
applied at new hydro sites within the
first year of completion.
Dr Phouvin’s work is closely linked
with a current collaborative project
between ILWS and Narrandera
Fisheries Centre. After his
presentation, Dr Phouvin was
presented with a Crawford Fund
Fellowship Award for early to midcareer researchers by the Crawford
Fund’s Chief Executive, Dr Denis
Blight, AO. Dr Blight said Dr
Phouvin was the first researcher
in the fisheries science field to
receive the award.
“It’s a fascinating idea,” said Max.
“Can we improve the world through
tourism; can we have a good time
and help other people at the same
time?”
Rosemary described her time as an
adventure travel guide working in
Nepal 20 years ago as the
foundation to her career at CSU
lecturing in Ecotourism. During her
guiding years she worked with the
book’s co-editor Dr. Kelly Bricker, a
fellow-guide. They decided to do the
book while working together at the
University of Utah while Rosemary
was on study leave.
One of the successful case studies
in the book is the Three Sisters
Adventure Trekking Company, a tour
guide company in Nepal run by three
sisters who operate trekking tours for
women. Their business supports the
empowerment of local women by
giving them tourism and business
skills as well as increasing their
confidence and economic
independence.
The morning tea also included a
presentation by ILWs PhD student
Patrick Cobbinah who talked about
his PhD topic, ‘Reducing Poverty in
Developing Countries through
Ecotourism: A Case Study of Kakum
Conservation Area in Ghana.’
“I am struck by the similarity of
issues faced by Laos and the
Murray Darling Basin, and hence
the potential for cooperation and
collaborative research,” he said.
Institute Events
Book launch
Thirty seven ILWS members and
guests attended a special morning
tea on Tuesday December 4 to
congratulate Dr Rosemary Black on
the release of a new book she has
co-edited Sustainable Tourism &
The Millennium Development Goals:
Effecting Positive Change.
Visitors to the Institute and Charles
Sturt University in Albury-Wodonga
on November 15 were Dr Denis
Blight, AO, Chief executive of the
Crawford Fund (pictured above) and
ILWS Newsletter
Institute director Prof Max Finlayson
congratulated Rosemary and her
colleagues for their innovativeness in
examining sustainable tourism as a
means of addressing the Millennium
Development Goals.
(L to R) Patrick Cobbinah, Dr Rosemary
Black and Prof Max Finlayson
Appointments
Dr Peter Spooner is now on the
editorial board of the peer reviewed
journal Environmental Management
(2012-2014)
Prof Max Finlayson has been
appointed an Invited Expert to the
Ramsar Convention’s Scientific and
Technical Review Panel for another
three years, particularly in respect of
his expertise on wetlands and
climate.
Issue 32 – 2013
14
Profile
Dr Shelby Laird
New ILWS member is Dr Shelby
Laird who began working with the
University’s School of Environmental
Science in March last year as a
lecturer in outdoor recreation and
environmental education based in
Albury-Wodonga.
Shelby, an American, grew up in
North Carolina’s capital city of
Raleigh. When she was 12 she left
that urban environment to move with
her family to the small town of Troy
in a rural area where there was “still
plenty of wilderness left.”
“For example, in my eighth grade in
Physical Education, they actually
taught the hunter safety course
because so many of the kids (mostly
boys) went hunting,” says Shelby.
Three years later she attended the
North Carolina School of Science
and Mathematics, a public boarding
school, for Years 11 and 12 before
doing a four year Bachelor of
Science Degree in Science
Education at North Carolina State
University where she “fell in love with
geology so took a lot of extra
geology classes.”
She then taught for four years as an
Earth and Environmental Science
teacher at Garner Magnet High
School, North Carolina and began
her Masters in Education with North
Carolina State University. She then
enrolled in the university’s graduate
school full-time to complete her
Masters.
She also took on a part-time job
“where I got to teach teachers how
ILWS Newsletter
to take children outside to study
water quality” with the State of North
Carolina’s Division of Water
Resources, working with an
international program called Project
Wet. That job lasted four years and
coincided with her doing a PhD in
Forestry on volunteer water quality
monitoring and the birth of her
daughter Patricia, now four years of
age.
After graduating in 2010 Shelby
taught geology at a community
college and taught (online) high
school students who had been
expelled. In January 2011 she got a
post-doc position with the US Forest
Service based at Coweeta
Hydrologic Laboratory in North
Carolina which backs onto the
Appalachian Trail. There she worked
on a “Climate Change Adaptation
and Mitigation Management Options”
project, the end result is a book for
land managers in the south-eastern
United States which is to be
published this year.
“I was the manager of the book
project,” says Shelby who co-wrote
several chapters and was in charge
of data assistance, analysis and GIS
work for some of its chapters. She
then applied for and got the position
with CSU.
“Basically my husband and I had
lived in North Carolina all our lives
and thought it would be interesting to
see something different,” she says.
Current research
Research-wise Shelby is interested
in environmental education, to which
there are multiple parts.
One part is her interest in
connection to nature research.
Currently she is working with the
Murray Childcare Centre (on the
campus in Thurgoona) on a project
funded by a CSU Green
Sustainability Grant looking at how
the children, teachers and parents
interact with the more natural
elements (such as gardens) of the
centre’s outdoor area.“We hope that
it is a project that will build on itself,”
she says.
Another part is environmental
attitudes and behaviour and she is
involved in two projects – the first
one she and Dr Rosemary Black
have is on understanding residents’
perception of biodiversity with a case
study in Thurgoona. That project is
funded by the Albury Conservation
Council and surveys and interviews
with residents will be done later this
year. The second, funded by CSU
Green and also with Dr Black, is a
project investigating transportation
decisions and behaviours of
students and staff at CSUs AlburyWodonga campus. Focus groups
have been held and a survey will be
conducted in autumn.
“We want to understand the barriers
because in a rural setting it is very
difficult to convince people to use
any sort of public transport because
often it is very limited in availability,”
says Shelby. “We hope to come up
with some alternatives for
sustainable transportation choices.”
Shelby is also interested in working
with some of the Institute’s natural
scientists (such as the ecologists) to
develop some citizen science
projects, curriculums for school
children or resources for teachers so
members of the public or children
can help collect data that can be
used by scientists.
“Sometimes scientists can be really
apprehensive about using data from
volunteers or children,” says Shelby.
“Teachers can be hesitant to collect
data and sometimes need training
on methodology. My background as
a teacher has helped me work with
scientists to develop that training.”
She says citizen science is growing
a lot in the United States is surprised
that it isn’t used more in Australia.
“There’s so much ground here to
cover and so few people that it
seems that it would be useful to
engage volunteers to help with
scientific research,” says Shelby.
“I’ve seen it used where you engage
tourists...people will pay you to come
and help you with your research. It’s
an incredibly useful opportunity for
researchers if you include someone
who is trained in working with
volunteers.”
*Shelby who is a member of the
Institute’s new SRA on
Environmental Justice and
Governance for Social Change also
sees herself as associated with the
Sustainable Water SRA because of
the technical work she has done in
water research and would like to
continue her knowledge in that field.
Issue 32 – 2013
15
Post-graduates
Graduations
Congratulations to all our postgraduate students who were
awarded their doctorates at last
year’s graduation ceremonies. They
included:
Dr Harry Sakulis - Konsevason na
Divelomen insaiat long Papua New
Guinea – An Evaluation of
Integrated Conservation and
Development Projects in PNG.
Principal supervisor Dr Jim Birkhead
Dr Maggie Watson –Effects of
parasites on the Crested Tern
Thalasseus Bergii. Principal
supervisor A/Prof Shane Raidal
Dr Sonia Graham – Social relations
and natural resource management:
The significance of trust and power
to solving a collective weed
management problem. Principal
supervisor A/Prof Ian Gray
Dr Sylvia Zukowski- Impacts of
fishing regulations on the
sustainability of Murray Crayfish
(Euastacus armatus), NSW: social
and biological perspectives. Principal
supervisor A/Prof Robyn Watts
Dr Penny Cooke – The social
construction of informal adult
learning in community-based natural
resource management groups.
Principal supervisor Dr Brian
Hemmings
Dr Saeed Sabri-Matanagh (Doctor
of Business Administration) – Impact
of a learning culture on
organisational change. Principal
supervisor Dr Glen Duncan
Dr Catherine Car- Millipede
communities in south-eastern
Australia: systematics, biogeography
and short range endemism. Principal
supervisor Dr Nick Klomp
Dr Janelle Levesque - Benefit
finding in parental cancer: types and
predictors of benefits and their
influence on depression and wellbeing. Principal supervisor Dr Darryl
Maybery
Dr Binod Devkota- Socio-economic
outcomes of community forestry in
Nepal: Lessons from three diverse
rural communities. Principal
supervisor Dr Digby Race
Dr Maggie Watson with Chancellor
Lawrence Willett AO -GFP Studios
Dr Wendy Minato- Exploring the
influence of social norms on the
management of native vegetation on
private land. Principal supervisor
Prof Allan Curtis
Dr Lukas Wibowo- Exploring the
policy dimensions of communitybased forestry in Indonesia. Principal
supervisor Dr Digby Race
ILWS Newsletter
PhD News
On the work front Dr Maggie
Watson has a half-time two year
post-doc fellowship with
Conservation Evidence. While based
at CSU, she will be working with Dr
Amos Bouskila from Ben-Gurion Uni
in Israel.
PhD student Michelle Olivier
attended a UN Global Compact
Network meeting in Sydney on Nov
7 with special guest Baroness Amos,
Under-secretary General for
Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency
Relief.
Manu Saunders gave a poster
presentation on ‘Pan trap catches of
pollinator insects vary with habitat’ at
the VII Southern Connection
Congress, University of Otago,
Dunedin, New Zealand, January 2125.
Dr Gill Earl - Applying a Statutory
Duty of Care to improve biodiversity
outcomes at a regional scale.
Principal supervisor Prof Allan Curtis
Dr Anna Lukasiewicz- Lost in
translation: Where is the Social
Justice in Australian water reform?
Principal supervisor Prof Kathleen
Bowmer
(L to R) Dr Penny Cooke, Dr Gill Earl, Dr
Anna Lukasiewicz, Dr Binod Devkota, Dr
Lukas Wibowo, Dr Sylvia Zukowski & Dr
Wendy Minato – pic by Paul McCormack
Dr Sonia
Graham
Congratulations to PhD student
Yalmambirra who, after a long haul,
has submitted his thesis on
Indigenous Cultures in
Contemporary Australia: A Wiradjuri
Case Study. Yal is supervised by Dr
Rik Thwaites and Dr Jim Birckhead.
New PhD students
After researching the behaviour of
an interesting world-wide ant
species, new international PhD
student Zsophia (Sophie) Palfi is
now checking out the behaviour of
ants in Australia. (More next page)
Issue 32 – 2013
16
Jess Schoeman, whose
supervisors are Dr Catherine
Allan and Prof Max Finlayson,
began her PhD in January for a
project funded by the Lachlan
Catchment Management
Authority.
The social research project is
called 'Adaptive management
and participation of local
communities in wetland and
water management in the
Lachlan Valley' and Jess is
based at CSUs AlburyWodonga campus.
(L to R) Jess Schoeman & Sophie Palfi
She is looking at how they help
disperse acacia seeds along our
roadsides and along Travelling Stock
Routes (TSRs).
Sophie, who is Hungarian, did her
Bachelor and then her Masters
Degree in Ecology at Babes-Bolyai
University in Romania. She began
working on the behavioural ecology
of ants in her second year of her
under-graduate studies and was a
member of that university’s social
insects working group. Sophie
studied obligatory slave-making
ants, a big red ant with sharp
mandibles (jaws) which are totally
dependent on their slaves – another
species of ant but closely related that they ‘kidnap’ as pupae and take
back to an existing nest just for slave
ants.
“The slave ants forage for the slavemaking ants; they bring food to
them; they do all the ‘housework’
around their nests etc,” explains
Sophie whose research proved that
without the slave ants, the obligatory
slave-making ants died.
Sophie then worked for a year in a
National Park in Hungary where she
monitored threatened plant species
and did office work. Sophie and her
husband (a vet now working in
Albury) moved to Australia at the
end of last year for her PhD, with
principal supervisor Dr Peter
Spooner, in Albury-Wodonga.
“I am interested in landscape
ecology, the PhD topic which was
advertised and as it has turned out
I’ve been able to incorporate my
interest in ants,” says Sophie whose
PhD at this stage is titled ‘The role of
novel human disturbances on antplant interactions in roadside
environments.’
ILWS Newsletter
Jess, who was born in South Africa,
moved to Queensland
(Rockhampton) with her family in
2001 before moving to Brisbane to
do her undergraduate studies in
environmental science, majoring in
ecology, at the University of
Queensland. As part of her Masters
in Water Management, with Griffith
University, she tracked the
implementation of the Healthy
Waterways non-urban diffuse source
pollution management action plan,
while also working at Healthy
Waterways as a receptionist.
She found that the restructure of the
water industry and amalgamation of
local governments in South East
Queensland had greatly affected the
implementation of management
actions. After her Masters, she was
sub-contracted by Healthy
Waterways to write a case study on
the South East Queensland Water
Grid for the project 'Analysis of
reservoir operations under climate
change' funded by the Water
Research Foundation.
Jess then worked as a research
assistant for eight months at the
University of Queensland on a social
research project 'Incorporating
climate change adaptation and
resilience-building needs within
management of social-ecological
systems' funded by the Global
Change Institute at UQ.
“We ran a series of workshops
looking at the risks and opportunities
of climate variability in three different
communities – rural, peri-urban/
urban and coastal,” says Jess. The
process emphasized the need for an
inter-disciplinary, collaborative
approach incorporating local, expert
and professional knowledge in order
to respond to climate change
impacts and improve resilience in
South East Queensland.
ILWS PhD scholarship holder
With south-east Australia in the
midst of yet another bushfire season,
new ILWS PhD scholarship recipient
Samantha Strong’s proposed
research topic is both timely and
relevant.
Sam Strong on the family farm which
was affected by bushfire in January this
year
Sam, who lives on the family farm at
Ruffy, near Seymour, Victoria,
intends to study the discourse
around the 2009 bushfires in Victoria
and the woody regeneration that has
occurred since. She will be a
member of the Institute’s Woody
Regrowth in Regional Landscapes
SRA.
Sam, who completed a landscape
architecture degree from RMIT in
1992, worked in that field both in
Australia and overseas until 2007
when she decided to do her Postgraduate Diploma and then her
Masters in Environmental
Management with CSU which she
completed in 2010. Her Masters
project, under the supervision of Dr
Catherine Allan (also principal
supervisor for Sam’s PhD) was a
discourse analysis of public
responses (as expressed in the
newspapers of the time) to three
major bushfires in Victoria- 1851,
1939 and 1983.
“I was looking at the metaphors and
analogies that came out of that,”
says Sam who is interested in how
people connect to their landscapes
and environments and the different
ways in which they express that. “I
think the experience I had in 2009
with the bushfires triggered a lot of
what I wanted to do in my Masters
year.”
In 2011, Sam (who had worked with
Parks Victoria’s Fire Recovery
Program in community engagement)
Issue 32 – 2013
17
presented a paper at the Institute of
Australian Geographers Conference
in Wollongong based on her
research and established links to the
Department of Sustainability and
Environment’s Bushfire Learning
Network. Last year she worked as a
statewide program coordinator for a
community education program
“Fishcare”.
Sam sees doing the PhD as a way of
exploring many of the questions that
came up for her by doing the
Masters. “The Masters was like
dipping my toe in the water,” says
Sam. “Now I want to go deeper. I am
so appreciative of the opportunity to
undertake this thanks to the support
of the ILWS scholarship.”
Masters Research
Masters student Liz Znidersic , who
is supervised by A/Prof David
Watson ,has received and
Australian Geographic Society Seed
grant for her project which is
investigating habitat preference and
use by the Lewin’s rail (Lewinia
pectoralis brachipus).The study is
being conducted on Tasman Island,
Tasmania. (pic below)
identify presence or absence of the
birds in a stratified series of sites
distributed throughout Tasman
island. The use of 2 different
methods will assist in determining an
effective methodology for research
into cryptic species.
Liz, who lives in Tasmania, is a
distance education student, who
started her Masters in Natural
Resource Management last year.
She works part-time for Parks and
Wildlife Tasmania as a Discovery
ranger, designing and implementing
education and interpretation
programs of the natural
environment. She also works as an
ornithological consultant conducting
surveys and leads children's
education programs focusing on the
environment they live in.
In Italy, and based in the Sardinian
University town of Sassari, Catherine
and colleagues from the Centre for
Desertification Research grappled
with issues related to continuing to
practice traditional agronomic
research in a post-modern, climate
change world.
Catherine presented some of the
output of that grappling at the Italian
Agronomy Conference in Bari.
Moving north to Bonn’s Department
of Political and Cultural Change,
Centre for Development Research
Catherine continued to think and
write about meaningful responses to
wicked resource management
issues, in this case related to water
resources governance.
Her tour finished with a month in
residence at the James Hutton
Institute in Aberdeen; a perfect place
to share reflections and emerging
understanding with the 35+ social
researchers in residence. A number
of written works will result from these
visits, and Catherine is happy to
discuss aspects of these centres
and/or her research partnerships.
(Above) Lewin's rail captured on one of
the remote trap cameras.
Overseas Trips
Visit to Sardinia
Tasman Island is an introduced
predator free environment due to a
recent successful cat eradication
program.
The Lewin’s rail is a poorly known
species with 8 described subspecies
occurring in Indonesia, Papua New
Guinea and Australia. Three
subspecies are endemic to Australia,
with one subspecies (L. p. clelandi)
in Western Australia presumed
extinct. The presumed extinction
highlights major gaps in our
understanding of these birds due to
their cryptic nature.
The project will assist in the
conservation by contributing new
and practical information on habitat
preferences and substrate use.
Remote motion-sensing cameras
and call surveys will be used to
ILWS Newsletter
At Sorso, near Sassari. Pic by Pier
Paolo Roggero
In the News
Mapping Aboriginal Knowledge of
the Bush
A story featuring comments by Prof
Max Finlayson on the work on
mapping Aboriginal knowledge of the
bush, appeared in Australian
Geographic, Dec 26
The old town of Sassari, Sardinia
As part of her SSP leave in the
second half of 2012 Dr Catherine
Allan visited Italy, Germany and
Scotland to build on existing, and
create new research partnerships.
Mistletoe research
Dr David Watson’s mistletoe work
was certainly picked up by the
international media over Christmas
beginning with a story in the New
York Times on Dec 17.
Read more In the News at
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/ilws/
news/inthenews/in%20the%20news
%20index.htm
Issue 32 – 2013
18
Publications
Peer-reviewed Papers
Clarke, P. J., Lawes, M. J., Midgley,
J. J., Lamont, B. B., Ojeda, F.,
Burrows, G. E., Enright, N. J., and
Knox, K. J. E. (2013) Resprouting as
a key functional trait: how buds,
protection and resources drive
persistence after fire. New
Phytologist 197, 19-35.
Race, D.H, Curtis, A., and Sample,
R. (2012) Restoring the bush on
private land: perspectives of
landholders in Victoria. Australasian
Journal of Environmental
Management, 19 (4): 227-240. DOI
10:1080/14486563.2012.719347
Mazur, N., Curtis, A., and Rogers,
M. (2013) Do you see what I see?
Rural landholders’ belief in climate
change. Society and Natural
Resources.
DOI:10.1080/08941920.2012.68665
0
Finlayson, C.M., Davis, J.A., Gell,
P.A., Kingsford, R.T. & Parton, K.A.
(2013) The status of wetlands and
the predicted effects of global
climate change: the situation in
Australia. Aquatic Sciences 75, 73–
93. DOI 10.1007/s00027-011-0232-5
Senaratna Sellamuttu, S., de Silva,
S., Nagabhatla, N., Finlayson, C.M.,
Pattanaik, C. and Prasad, N. (2012)
The Ramsar Convention’s wise use
concept in theory and practice: an
inter-disciplinary investigation of
practice in Kolleru Lake, India.
Journal of International Wildlife Law
& Policy 15:228–250.
DOI.org/10.1080/13880292.2012.74
9138
Mohamed, Y.A., Bastiaanssen,
W.G.M, Savenije, H.H.G., van den
Hurk, B.J.J.M & Finlayson, C.M.
(2012) Evaporation from wetland
versus open water: a theoretical
explanation and literature review.
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
47–48, 114–121.
DOI:10.1016/j.pce.2011.08.005
Sutherland, W.J., Alves, J.A.,
Amano, T., Chang, C.H., Davidson,
N.C., Finlayson, C.M., Gill, J.A.,
Gill, R.E.J.R, Gonzalez, P.M.,
Gunnarsson, T.G., Klleijn, D., Spray,
C.J., Szekely, T. & Thompson,
D.B.A. (2012) A horizon scanning
assessment of current and potential
future threats to migratory
shorebirds. Ibis 154, 663–679.
ILWS Newsletter
Nagabhatla N, Senaratna Sellamuttu
S, Bobba AG, Finlayson M,
Wickermasuriya R, Van Brakel M,
Prasad N & Pattanaik C (2012)
Insight to ecosystem based
approach (EBA) at landscape level
using a geospatial medium. Journal
of Indian Society for Remote
Sensing 40, 47–64. DOI:
10.1007/s12524-011-0080-8
Gentle, P., & Maraseni, T. N. (2012).
Climate change, poverty and
livelihoods: adaptation practices by
rural mountain communities in
Nepal. Environmental Science &
Policy, 21, 24-34.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.201
2.03.007
Manock, I., Islam, R., Hicks, J.,
Sappey, R.B. & Ingham, V., (2013).
Community Response to Frequent
Flooding in an Australian Rural
Town. Australian Journal of
Emergency Management. 28(1)
Islam, R., Manock, I. Sappey, R.
Hicks, J. & Ingham, V. (2012)
Flooding in Bangladesh and
Australia: Applying an
Interdisciplinary Model. International
Journal of Interdisciplinary Social
Sciences 6(8 )81-92.
http://iji.cgpublisher.com/product/pub
.88/prod.1515/m.2
Hicks, J., Sappey, R., Basu, P.K.,
Keogh, D., & Gupta, R. (2012)
Succession Planning in Australian
Farming, Australasian Accounting
Business and Finance Journal, 6(4),
94-110.
Lunt, I.D., Byrne, M., Hellmann, J.J.,
Mitchell, N.J., Garnett, S.T.,
Hayward, M.W., Martin, T.G.,
McDonald-Madden, E., Williams,
S.E. & Zander, K.K. (2013). Using
assisted colonisation to restore
ecosystem function and conserve
biodiversity under climate change.
Biological Conservation 157, 172–
177.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc
e/article/pii/S0006320712003898
Whipp, R.K., Lunt, I.D., Spooner,
P.G.. & Bradstock, R. (2012)
Changes in forest structure over 60
years: tree densities continue to
increase in the Pilliga forests, New
South Wales, Australia. Australian
Journal of Botany 60, 1–8.
Lunt, I.D., Jansen, A. & Binns, D.
(2012). Effects of flood timing and
livestock grazing on exotic annual
plants in riverine floodplains. Journal
of Applied Ecology 49(5), 1131–
1139.
Yutian,S., Sharma, K., Murphy, T.,
Hicks, J. & Arthur, L. (2012)
Exports and energy consumption in
China: an input –output perspective,
Interdisciplinary Environmental
Review 13(4) pp. 279-293.
Spooner, P.G. & Morris, M.C.
(2012) Long-term stock grazing
management in Travelling Stock
Reserves and influence on
conservation values. Ecological
Management and Restoration 13(3),
309–311.
Triplett, S., Luck, G.W. & Spooner,
P.(2012) The importance of
managing the costs and benefits of
bird activity for agricultural
sustainability. Int. J. Agric.
Sustainability 10, 268-88.
Watson, M. J. (2012), A blood
sampling technique for prehatched
chicks. Journal of Field Ornithology,
83: 407–411. DOI:10.1111/j.15579263.2012.00391.x
Nimmo, D. G., Kelly, L. T., SpenceBailey, L. M., Watson, S. J., Taylor,
R. S., Clarke, M. F. and Bennett, A.
F. (2012), Fire Mosaics and Reptile
Conservation in a Fire-Prone
Region. Conservation Biology.
DOIi:10.1111/j.15231739.2012.01958.x
Book Chapters
Basu, P.K., Hicks, J., Conroy, D. &
and Sappey, R.B. (2012)
Implementing policy for place:
Delegating labour market policy
decisions to the local level’, in
Lordoglu,K., Demirer,D.K & Siriner,I.
(eds) Labour Markets and
Employment, IJOPEC Publication
London and Istanbul, pp.95-111
Matthews, A., Spooner. P.G. &
Lunney, D. (2012) Herbivores in
alpine herbfields: will wombats shift
to higher altitudes with climate
change? In Lunney.D & Hutchings P.
( eds) Wildlife and Climate Change:
Towards Robust Conservation
Strategies For Australian Fauna,
Royal Zoological Society of NSW,
Mosman, Australia, pp. 68-79
Paul, S., Darcovich, K. and Jack, A.
(2012) Saltmarsh Conservation at
Sydney Olympic Park. In: Sainty, et.
al. (eds.) Estuary Plants and What’s
Happening to Them in South-East
Australia, Sainty Books, 510-517pp.
Issue 32 – 2013
19
Conference Papers
Lukasiewicz, A., Davidson, P.,
Syme, G. and Bowmer, K. ‘How the
social construction of the
environment affects peoples’
reactions to water policy. Paper
presented at Tapping the Turn:
Water’s Social Dimensions
conference, Canberra, Nov 15-16
Spooner, P.G. (2012) ‘Minor rural
road networks: connectivity and
biodiversity values’. 16th
International Symposium on
Problems of Landscape Ecological
Research, Smolenice, Slovak
Republic, 24-27 Sept
Spooner, P.G. (2012) ‘Road
reserves in NSW: values,
challenges, and opportunities’. NSW
Linear Reserve Environmental
Management Forum, Maritime
Museum Sydney, 30 Nov
Edney, J. (2013) Diver impacts on
underwater cultural heritage: Case
studies from Asia-Pacific,.Society for
Historical Archaeology's 46th Annual
conference on historical and
underwater archaeology, University
of Leicester, Leicester, United
Kingdom, Jan 9-12
Sappey,J. & Krivokapic-Skoko,B.
(2013) The Struggle for Democracy
in the Marketized University. Paper
presented at World Universities
Forum, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, 10-11 Jan
Hicks, J., Basu, P.K., & Sherley. C.
(2012) The Role of Education in
Determining Growth in Total Factor
Productivity: Evidence from the
provinces of China’. Paper
presented to the 41st Annual
Conference of Regional Science
Association International: British and
Irish Section, National University of
Ireland, Galway, Ireland, 28-30
August.
Petrovic, K. (2012) A world on a
plate: What do possums eat when
they are overseas? Paper presented
to New Zealand Ecological Society
Conference 2012 Annual
Conference, Lincoln, Canterbury,
New Zealand, Nov 25-29.
Simmons, P, Small F., (2012, Public
relations practices in Australian local
government authorities. Paper
presented to the World Public
Relations Forum, Melbourne,
Australia. Nov 18-20
Simmons, P. & Small, F. (2012)
Promotion, monitoring and strategic
ILWS Newsletter
advice: professional communication
in Australian local government.
Paper presented at PRism online
public relations journal. 9(1)
http://www.prismjournal.org/vol9_1.h
tml
Simmons, P., Small, F., (2012,
November) Politics, promotion and
pavements: professional
communication in Australian local
government. Paper presented to
International Communication and
Media Conference (I-Come),
Penang, Malaysia, Nov 1-3
Other
Prof Max Finlayson was one of the
contributing authors to Boelee, E.,
Chiramba, T. & Khaka, E. (eds)
2011. An ecosystem services
approach to water and food security.
Nairobi: United Nations Environment
Programme; Colombo: International
Water Management Institute
Watson, J., Hitchcock, G. and
Lavery, T. 2013. Conservation of
shorebirds in the Torres Strait.
Tattler 27: 12-13.
Lukasiewicz, A., Finlayson, C.M., &
Pittock, J. (2013) Climate Change
Adaptation: An Ecosystem-Based
Approach. Presented at the Global
Environmental Change and Human
Health: “Extreme Events and
Urbanization in the APM Region”
Symposium, UKM, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, Jan 15
agriculture. Australian Farm Institute,
Sydney
New Grants
External grants
Luck, G & Triplett, S. (2012-14)
Starling management and street
tree selection for Macquarie
Street, Dubbo City Council, $88,000.
Watson, D & Znidersic,L. (2012)
Australian Geographic Society Seed
grant. Investigating habitat
preference and use by the Lewin’s
rail (Lewinia pectoralis brachipus).
Internal Grants
Loftus, S & Ingham, V. (2012-2013)
Emergency decision making:
commonalities and principles.
CSU Faculty of Arts, $14,662.
Spence,E., Ragusa, A., Weckert, J.,
Brey, P., Hartz Soraker, J & van
Wynsberghe, A. (2012) New ethical
approaches to responsible
research & innovation, CSU Global
Alliance Grant. A collaboration
between researchers at CSU and
the University of Twente, The
Netherlands, $22,000
Consultancies
Schultz, N. (2012) Floristic surveys
in River Red Gum Forests, OEH,
$43,130
Lukasiewicz, A., Finlayson, C.M.
(2013) Impact of Environmental
Change on Natural Resources.
Presented at the Global
Environmental Change and Human
Health: “Extreme Events and
Urbanization in the APM Region”
Young Scientist Workshop, UKM,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jan 18
Mullen, J.D., Gould, I., Ball, G. and
Bennett, L., (2012) Assessing the
Economic Impact of Some Dairy
Processing Research Projects.
Australasian Agribusiness Review,
Paper 4, Volume 20 available at
http://www.agrifood.info/review
Reports
Mullen, J.D., (2012) The future
Productivity and Competitiveness
challenge for Australian Agriculture
in Mullen et al., Assessing the
opportunities for achieving future
productivity growth in Australian
CONTACT
Margrit Beemster
Communications Coordinator
Institute for Land, Water and Society
Charles Sturt University
Ph:02 6051 9653
Email: [email protected]
P.O. Box 789
ALBURY NSW 2640
AUSTRALIA
www.csu.edu.au/research/ilws
Issue 32 – 2013
20